A journal dedicated to truth, freedom of speech and radical spiritual consciousness. Our mission is the liberation of men and women from oppression, violence and abuse of any kind, interpersonal, political, religious, economic, psychosexual. We believe as Fidel Castro said, "The weapon of today is not guns but consciousness."

Friday, May 2, 2014

Dr. Montiero still fighting at Temple University, Philadelphia Pa

Today at 9:03 AM

(photo: Dr. Monteiro teaching)Kudos to videographer Ted Passon for crafting the video, to Mumia Abu-Jamal for the narration, and to Jamila K. Wilson for working up the Indiegogo fundraising site platform.

Thank you all, for signing the Call for Monteiro! Now let’s take this to The Chronicle for Higher Education, as we already have to the Philadelphia Tribune. Read on to see what we need and why we need it. Please forward this email to your colleagues and friends.

"Tony Monteiro is an inspiration to all progressives who know him. His heart is as big as his brain. He deserves our support." Noel A. Cazenave professor of sociology, University of Connecticut

Dr. Anthony Monteiro’s struggle for reinstatement with tenure to Temple University's African American Studies Department has only grown stronger, his support spreading through the academic halls of the nation. The world and national support by educators in the Call for Monteiro has been extraordinary (read and sign-on to The Callhere).

We are now ramping up the fund-raising campaign for Dr. Monteiro so that we can publicize the movement for him ever more broadly.

This struggle for Dr. Monteiro touches so many other issues alive in the institutions and communities in which we work. Let’s pull together to put the funds behind this movement.

We Need Your Help

We are seeking $20,000 to purchase ad space – a full page ad - in the The Chronicle of Higher Education. This will build support for Dr. Monteiro among students and faculty nationally and shine a glaring light on the current attacks to radical and progressive academics and scholar/activists by right-wing, neo-liberal policies that are destroying black, brown, and poor communities through tactics like gentrification.

We need your support to help us purchase ad space in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Any amount of money you are able to give would be greatly appreciated. Contribute now at the video fundraiser site.

We have had several national scholars "put their money where their mouth is," by contributing up to $200 to support this movement - can you match these? If not, please know that every contribution counts. If we can get a minimum of 500 people to contribute just $40 each, we’d reach our goal quickly. Let’s make it happen, with whatever donations you can make! Every donation will help us make our goal.

Join The Call – Stand with these Headline Signers:

Gerald Horne, Department of African American Studies, Univ. of Houston. “We need to take a step back and recognize that the attack on Dr. Monteiro is a part of a larger attack upon the academy. It is well recognized that one of the sanctuaries for radicals in the United States is the campus...As this country moves steadily to the right, the perception is that progressive forces on campuses need to be routed . . . To the extent that we don’t speak up for Tony Monteiro, professors like myself are only jeopardizing our own existence.”

Joy James, Williams College. “The role of the intellectual is that of the advocate: press forward, ask challenging questions, take difficult stances to protect the life of the critical mind as a political right. The case of Dr. Monteiro makes clear that the university has to decide whether it will become a managerial setting for conformity to state-corporate interests or whether it will respect its constituents, by recognizing their rights to think and teach, and to organize independently for a just world.”

Lemah R. Bonnick, Sociology, St. Mary’s University (London, England).“Dr. Monteiro, in binding his scholarship to exposing the global assault on human equality and justice, and the narrative which says to the marginalized there is no alternative to their suffering, helps to bring the voice of the community into the academy. In doing so, he seeks to expand the scope of the university as a public space where conceptions of the democratic good, are unbounded by the one percent’s narcissism, racism, class arrogance, misogyny and homophobia.”

Gary Y. Okihiro, Professor of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University.“In Philadelphia, where the bell of liberty hangs silent, Temple University reveals itself—in the case of Dr. Monteiro—as just another instrument of the state. While ascribing to the universal "we the people," the US rendered the continent's indigenous peoples "aliens" on their land, and African Americans, three-fifths of "all persons." I reference history simply to point out the hypocrisy of the state and its instruments (the university) in their pronouncements of freedom and practices of Jim Crowism and bondage.”

David Roediger, Department of History, University of Illinois.“When administrators are able to rationalize the firing of an exemplary teacher, thinker, and organizer like Tony Monteiro with lectures on the difference between tenure-line and non-tenure-line appointments, they remind us of the urgency of fighting for the rights of the all of the untenured, the growing majority of those performing faculty labor.”

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Duke University, Sociology Department and Chair.“The firing of Dr. Monteiro at Temple is indicative of the racial moment we live. Cosmetic diversity has taken a hold in the academy, hence, black scholars who combine research and practice and whose work is oriented by the moral imperative of achieving racial justice are regarded as "partisan" and accused of playing the "race card." It is time for us to wake up and fight back. Fighting for the reinstatement of Dr. Monteiro is also fighting against neoliberal racism in the academy and in the nation. I stand in solidarity with Dr. Monteiro and join the call to extend him a tenure track position.”

Lewis R. Gordon, Professor of Philosophy, Africana Studies, Judaic Studies, U. Conn.“As Frantz Fanon warned, one of the obscenities of colonialism, enslavement, and racism is the effort to produce the ‘happy slave.’ Black Studies, now also called African American and Africana Studies, is part of the struggle against that abomination. Black radical thought challenges such oppressive systems with the revolutionary insight of truth, which has always threatened an academy invested in seeing otherwise. Temple University’s refusal to renew the contracts of Dr. Anthony Monteiro and Dr. Ahmed Muhammad (Maxell Stanford, Jr.) is a terrible blow against this important mission.”

Cornel West, Professor of Philosophy, Union Theological Seminary/NYC.“Anthony Monteiro is one of our grand intellectual freedom fighters who works in the tradition of W.E.B. Dubois and C.L.R. James. I’m in his corner 120 percent. I’m so glad to see both his students, as well as the community, rise up and support Dr. Monteiro.”

Marc Lamont Hill, Journalism & Education, Columbia Univ./Teachers College.“This is about an increasingly corporatized Temple University, animated by the principles of profit making, privatization, and exploitation. Within this neo-liberal universe, knowledge production becomes a commodity rather than an end itself; faculty labor (including that of graduate students and adjuncts) is deskilled, casualized, and rendered disposable; and the surrounding Black, brown, and poor communities are valued only to the extent that they enable economic opportunism through land grabs, resource liquidation, and full-fledged gentrification.”

About Me

Truth will not make you rich, but it will make you free.--Francis Bacon

Marvin has been ignored and silenced,like Malcolm would be ignored and silenced if he had lived on into the Now. He's one of the most extraordinary, exciting black intellectuals living today --Rudolph Lewis, Chickenbones.